The congress is going back to the drawing board. And maybe they’ll hammer out another plan. But the political question is who is in the driver’s seat this time. Clearly, the country is operating without a president right now — he has absolutely no juice to get anything done and his administration is so discredited that they can’t rally the public. Leadership on this is left to the Democrats. ( Republicans are going to go on strike just like the bankers and leave the whole thing in their hands.) If that’s the case, then the Democrats should set forth a real progressive plan — a New Deal for the 21st century.

Because I’m sorry, but we have seen this before. We have seen world event after world event after domestic horror after domestic horror offer the party the opportunity to stand up and say, “Not this time. Just this far, and no farther, and it stops right now.” We saw it in 2004 with Kerry and we saw it in 2005 with Katrina and we saw it in 2006 with the new majority and we saw it this year with FISA, the turning point at which no one turned. The place to make a stand, at which everyone remained sitting right where they were. I mean, I’m sorry, I know he’s a wacky little elf and all, butDennis Kucinich has been screaming this shit since 2003, when I first became aware of him:

Yet the most impassioned applause of the day was reserved for Kucinich. Introduced by Leo Gerard, president of the United Steelworkers of America, as “the only vegan in Congress,” Kucinich took the stage to John Lennon’s “Imagine” and proceeded to conjure the heyday of American progressivism by promising a new version of Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s Works Progress Administration. “We’re gonna rebuild America’s cities, and we’re gonna do it with America’s steel,” he roared, his voice far larger than his elfin frame. In his spellbinding speech, Kucinich laid out a lefty’s dream platform: Medicare for all, money pulled out of the Pentagon budget to pay for schools and other domestic programs, and “total nuclear disarmament.” He spoke to the crowd’s fury over the war in Iraq, getting a screaming standing ovation when he cried, “This war was wrong! This war was fraudulent! We must expose this administration!”

And you couldn’t pay the Bush Dogs and the other ten-a-penny hacks to listen, much less care.

I think we run by saying we are going to physically, with our hands and with hammers and nails, put right what went so wrong. I think we start right now, today, by calling for a comprehensive reconstruction program, with deadlines, goals, benchmarks to be met, with a built in Truman Commission to prevent no-bid contracting to companies like Halliburton. I think we start calling for that, as one, with one voice. I think in the face of terror and tragedy we become the people who say, you can overcome this, we will help you, have courage, have hope. Have hope.

The room for action has been there over and over and over again. For years now. Years. We are arguing with ourselves about something so completely self-evident that it should be classified a sin, that we can’t recognize it by now.

That I am supporting Obama, is in the hope that with a White House in their control, they’ll be less cowed. That with the example of what someone can do to inspire Americans to move, they might realize we’re all here, we’re all ready, we’re all hungry for it. We’re listening. All they have to do is speak. That I am supporting Obama, it’s in the belief that the simple “whoa, holy, shit, look at all those people who arefucking pissed off at stuff” will finally sink in.

Let’s not kid ourselves, though. This isn’t exactly the first big opening they’ve had to do something. This isn’t their first chance to fail. They’ve had chance after chance, and they’ve never missed a single one yet.

This election – for a larger section of the electorate than any since at least 1992 – isn’t a referendum on perception, it’s a long-overdue referendum on the state of people’s lives, and this society. This is why John McCain keeps doing all these bizarre “Hail Mary” stunts – he can’t win otherwise. He’s got to try and confuse everybody with Jerry Springer shananigans and melodramatic announcements and linking Barack Obama to al Qaeda and Timothy Leary and the Screech Sex Tape and hope that, somehow, the American public is stupid enough to ask for four more years of this shit. He’s got to do all this stuff, but he knows it probably won’t be enough. He’s probably going to lose. To a black guy. A black guy with an Ay-rab name who is smarter, taller, more decent, more educated, and just all around better than you and everyone you know; who could have your job and your whole life in a heartbeat but doesn’t need or want it; and who your cracker wife imagines she’s with when she’s fucking you, or Dustin Diamond, or whoever. He’s got Karl Rove, in a perfect storm of redneckressentiment and panic, and it’s just not enough. He isfucked.

Hi, faithful readers – let’s get the anti-stupidity nose plugs in and suit up, shall we? With the Palin Pimple (can’t really call it a bounce) popping, the guardians of the Gates Of Denial (just south of the Gates Of Delirium) are ringing the alarum bells. It’s as if they hadn’t really spent the last month singing the praises of the person they all now excoriate as He Who Is Not Realy A Conservative (HWINRAC), but we know better, don’t we?

McCain Likes Democrat Andrew Cuomo for SEC ChiefCNS News ^Posted onMonday, September 22, 2008 9:32:15 AM bySub-DriverMcCain Likes Democrat Andrew Cuomo for SEC Chief Monday, September 22, 2008 By Susan Jones, Senior Editor(CNSNews.com) – If he’s elected president, Republican Sen. John McCain says he would want Democrat Andrew Cuomo to chair the Securities and Exchange Commission.McCain, who has called for Republican SEC chief Chris Cox to resign, made the comment on the CBS program “60 Minutes” Sunday night.“I’m curious,” CBS Correspondent Scott Pelley told McCain. “If you want to fire Chris Cox, the chairman of the SEC, who would you replace him with?”McCain responded: “This may sound a little unusual, but I’ve admired Andrew Cuomo. I think he is somebody who could restore some credibility, lend some bipartisanship to this effort.”Pelley: He’s a Democrat.(Excerpt) Read more atcnsnews.com …

It was going to be a hard sell anyway but now there is no time or money for this.

WASHINGTON — Rep. Gene Taylor’s relentless two-year campaign to
secure wind coverage as part of the federal flood insurance program is
on the verge of failure, a victim of vicious opposition in the Senate,
of suspicions about a new government program and ultimately, of bad
timing.

“It looks like there will be an extension of the present
program,” said Taylor, D-Bay St. Louis, in an interview. The National
Flood Insurance Program expires Sept. 30 unless Congress acts and
lawmakers, anxious to help victims of hurricanes Ike and Gustav, are
looking for a simple extension – with no policy changes – while they
focus on the $700 billion Wall Street bailout.

As a former bride myself, and as someone who has participated and helped plan more weddings for friends than I care to count (and most of those friends are even still married!), I cannot for the life of me imagine a worse ideathan this one. I don’t believe for a second this is being seriously discussed by anyone in the McCain campaign besides a couple of stoners in the lawn-sign crew.

Leave the teenage pregnant shotgun aspect of this aside. Leave the cynicism of it out. The week before my wedding I nearly bit my mother’s head off for suggesting we change what kind of dessert we were serving. If she had called in CNN I don’t think anyone would have ever found her body. A big Christian wedding in and of itself is an enormous foofy deal no matter who’s involved; bringing the campaign press along for the ride is like holding the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade on crystal meth.

I am starting to want to invite Bristol Palin and her boyfriend over to my house until this campaign is over. They can stay in the spare room, eat my food, and be safe from all this nonsensical horseshit.

Anyway, and it’s been said a jillion times already but I like joining the chorus: isn’t it completely hysterical to see so many conservatives having honest debates about exactly how much of this billion dollar bailout is acceptable, when a national health care plan that costs a fraction of the bailout is MARX-FASCI-COMMU-CHE-STALIN-STREISAND horrible? Like, we can’t spare a penny so your kids can go to the doctor but, OH God you libtards don’t understand that the CEO of Goldman Sachs has a standard of living to which he’s grown accustomed and if he doesn’t have gold flakes in his eggs in the morning he’ll have a heart attack and die and you people will be THE MURDERERS AND WE WILL HUNT YOU and you will blame the one armed man and when the train derails you will run run run through the woods but Tommmy Lee Jones is on to you and “I didn’t do it!” “I don’t care” and then Batman Forever is fucking UNWATCHABLE.

I guess it’s true what the Captain said inCool Hand Luke. Some men, you just can’t reach. Women, too.

Thanks to the miracle of Facebook, I’ve been getting in touch with friends from high school, some of whom I haven’t heard from in the better part of two decades. And it’s amazing to see how their thought processes have changed. Many of them, unfortunately, have given into the dark side and decided to be Republicans. Note that I do not say “conservative,” because they really don’t give a shit about small government. They just want Jeebus to rule us all. Or they hate “liberals,” for reasons they can’t really explain.

Anyway, here’s what a friend had as her status update after the debate:

[I wish] that Obama would stop referring to Senator McCain as “John”. Show some respect-Didn’t your mama teach you any manners–oh that’s right she wansn’t around

Really? Really? Addressing a colleague like he is a colleague is disrespectful? And then you go and crack on Obama’s mother?

I just don’t understand what time does to some people. If it helps anyone’s sanity, this person is not living in a swing state by any stretch of the imagination. So there’s no electoral college implication for her vote.

I found myself seeing all the cracks. I found myself wishing he’d say this, say that, do this, do that, but I swear to God on earth, if McCain so much as mentions earmarks again, and Obama doesn’t say the words “Seal DNA,” I will start breaking fools.

But here’s the thing. McCain needed a knockout punch. He needed to use his awesome to pre-empt the disaster that is going to be Sarah Palin, he needed to blow Obama away. Instead he sounded old, tired, pissy, and frankly out of touch. Obama didn’t need to pound him into the dirt. I wish he would have, because it would have been satisfying to me on a level that a fresh ripe peach or a glass of chianti is satisfying to me, but in the end? McCain had stuff to accomplish tonight. McCain had a case to make. And he didn’t do it.

UPDATED WITH NEAR-FINAL NUMBERS CBS News and Knowledge Networks
conducted a nationally representative poll of approximately 500
uncommitted voters reacting to the debate in the minutes after it
happened.

Thirty-nine percent of uncommitted voters who watched the debate
tonight thought Barack Obama was the winner. Twenty-five percent
thought John McCain won. Thirty-six percent saw it as a draw.

Forty-six percent of uncommitted voters said their opinion of Obama
got better tonight. Thirty-one percent said their opinion of McCain got
better.

Sixty-six percent of uncommitted voters think Obama would make the
right decisions about the economy. Forty-four percent think McCain
would.

Forty-eight percent of these voters think Obama would make the
right decisions about Iraq. Fifty-eight percent think McCain would.

You know how the Rude Pundit does this thing where he lists all the ways in which he wouldn’t fuck Ann Coulter? Replace “Ann Coulter” in all those scenarios with “O’Hare Airport” and you’d have my day today. Or is it tomorrow? I dunno, after an hour and a half on the runway waiting to take off I said screw it, started ordering drinks.

(Best location for a Starbucks EVER: Next to the baggage claim at the airport. Also, never again am I flying out of that fucking zoo. Midway or no way, bitches!)

(I haven’t really slept in a couple days.)

I’m just gonna do the squishy part of the post-mortem early, get it out of the way, make room for the serious and the snarky. Do read on, though, for a list of 22 of the thousands of things, in no particular order, about this weekend that were completely awesome:

Following up on the post below (no, not the ferrets, the one below that) I no longerbelieve this kind of thing. I don’t believe she can’t have a press conference. I believe she doesn’t want to, or think she has to, but that shecan’t? George W. Bush can, and he’s so dumb you could smack him in the face with a bag of nickels and he’d just look at you. Come on.

I believe she’d be a so-so debater, because … I mean, it’s possible, but I don’t believe this is anything other than ramping down expectations for her debate, just the way McCain is doing for his. I am being deliberately pessimistic today. She was elected governor of Alaska, she clearly knows how to campaign, she’s a grownup, and this is just more bullshit from a campaign that’s elevated bullshitting into the kind of abstract art that hurts my head.

I am willing, as always, to be proven wrong, and I do so hope I am. I hope she gets up there and sucks her thumb for an hour and a half. I hope she really does boycott her own debate. I hope she really does get eaten alive by Joey the Shark. But … I mean, is it me or does this seem like just a little too much?